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The Italian speakers' agricultural history, says Pascoe, had been one 'one of
continuous, plodding effort to cultivate quite uncompromising land'.** This same
'plodding effort' was transferred to Australia with the immigrants farming wdth littie or
no machinery, planting crops to the last centimetre of soil, utilising simple animal
fertiUsers and adopting ingenious methods of irrigation. On his property at Yandoit
Battista Righetti brought water from a spring to his crops via an open race.*' Most
famiUes kept a minimum of livestock, such as a cow for milk, a few hens for eggs and
poultry and some pigs for lard, bacon and sausages, feeding them on skim milk, fmit
and other farm produce. Any products which the family was unable to generate itself
were bartered with other families (cf above Perini section pp. 188-189). While
increasing the range of goods available to a household, this economic and, at the same
time, social arrangement also avoided the need for currency, as a consequence,
increasing the reliance of Italian-speaking families upon their own community.
Without savings, it was difficuh to operate in the wider commercial world ~ and to
break free from this kind of peasant existence. There were exceptions, Gottardo
Foletta from Valle Verzasca drove a herd of 50 cattle down to Naples in 1868 and
shipped them via Southhampton to Melboume to form the basis of a successful dairy
busmess in Spring Creek.^" While a few other families, such as the Righettis at
Yandoit, developed large and commercially viable farms, most Italian speakers
produced only enough for their own consumption. Blacksmith shops, work areas,
dairies and smoke-houses surrounding the home were all designed to increase the
family's self-sufficiency and avoid dependency on others.
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